The Nexys3 board will allow you to explore many of the XC6SLX16’s capabilities. The board has three types of non-volatile memory onboard which will allow you to have your configurations running on power-up.

It provides many industry standard connectors such
as VGA, USB, Ethernet, JTAG, and a USB UART. It also
features four 12-pin PMOD connectors which can be used
to interface with Digilent Pmod devices or they can be
used as 32 general-purpose I/O pins for your own circuit
designs. A VHDC connector is provided which can be
connected to proto-boards, cables, and other devices
available from Digilent.

There are eight slide switches, eight LEDs, five
pushbuttons, and four seven-segment LED displays on the
board for experimentation. These items are a great way
to get started using the Nexys3 board because they are
easy to work with and do not require any external cables
or connections.

Digilent provides a demonstration program
(Nexys3_ISE_GPIO_UART.zip) from their Nexys3 web
page that demonstrates the operation of these items, as
well as sending out serial messages from the USB UART
port. You will need to download a virtual COM port

program from www.ftdichip.com in order to use this
serial port feature. This is a free download which installs
and operates without any problems.

The Spartan- 6 FPGAs can implement Xilinx’s
MicroBlaze embedded processor designs. This allows you
to configure and use the FPGA as a microprocessor.

All development software needed to program and
interface with the Nexys3 board is free. You can use the
latest Xilinx ISE web-pack software to compile designs
using either a graphical schematic entry or VHDL (see
www.xilinx.com).

To communicate with the board for testing purposes
or to download configurations into the FPGA itself (or
any of its non-volatile memories), Adept is used. Adept is
available as a free download from
www.digilentinc.com.

Documentation such as a reference manual and
schematic diagrams are all available from the Nexys3
web page. The reference manual provides essential
information about using all of the connections,
memories, etc., on the board.

The Nexys3 board sells for approximately $199 or
$119 for academic pricing. It’s a great way to work with
an FPGA at a reasonable price. SV